Hawkswood's Voyage

She stared at him. Her mouth opened. Finally she said:

“But you don’t think—you do! You think it was me!”

“Not you, but the beast that inhabits you.”

The eyes flared; the yellow grew in them until they were scarcely human any longer. “We are the same, the beast and I, and I tell you that it was not I who slew Pernicus.”

“Are you expecting me to believe there are two shifters on board this ship?”

“There must be, or else you are mistaken. Maybe someone killed him in such a way as to make it look as though it was done by a beast.”

“I am not a fool, Griella. I warned you about this many times. Now it has happened.”

“I did not do it! Please, Bardolin, you must believe me!”

The glow in the eyes had retreated and there was only the light of the pitiless sun setting the tears in them afire. She was a small girl again, tugging at his knee. The imp looked on, aghast.

“Why should I?” Bardolin said harshly, though he longed to take her in his arms, to say that he did, to make it all right.

“Is there nothing I can do to convince you?”

“What could you do, Griella?”

“I could let you see into my mind, the way you did before when I was about to change into the beast and you stopped me. You saw into me then, Bardolin. You can do it again.”

“I—”

He was not so sure of himself now. He had thought to extract a confession from her, but he had not considered beyond that. He knew he would never have turned her over to Murad—there would have been some bargain made, some deal done. But now he no longer knew what to do.

Because he did believe her.

“Let me see your eyes, Griella. Look at me.”

She tilted up her head obediently. The sun was behind him and his shadow fell upon her. He looked deep, deep into the sea-change of the eyes, and the top, the mast, the ship and the vast ocean disappeared.

A heartbeat, huge and regular. But as he listened the rhythm changed. It became erratic, slipping out of time. It took him a moment to realize that he was listening to two hearts beating not quite in tune with each other.

Pictures and images flickering like a shower of varicoloured leaves. He saw himself there, but shied away from that. He saw the ragged brown peaks of the Hebros Mountains that must have been her home. He saw swift, red- tinted images of wanton slaughter flitting past.

Too far back. He had gone too deep with his impatience. He must pull out a little.

The other heartbeat grew louder, drowning out the first. He thought he could feel the heat of the beast and the prickle of its harsh fur against his skin.

There! A ship upon a limitless ocean, and in the dark hours aboard a vision of white limbs intertwined, linen sheets in crumples of light and dark. An ecstatic, lean face he knew to be Murad’s hovering over him in the night.

The beast again, very close this time. He felt its anger, its hunger. The unrelenting rage it felt at being confined.

Except it was not. It was free and lying beside the naked man in the swaying cot, the stout supporting ropes creaking under the weight. It wanted to kill, to rip the night apart with scarlet carnage. But did not. It lay beside the sleeping, nightmare-ridden nobleman and watched over him in the night.

It wanted to kill, but could not. There was something that prevented it, something the beast could not understand but could not disregard.

Nothing else. A few spangled images. Himself, the imp, the terrible glory of the storm. Nothing more. No memory of murder, not on the ship, not since Abrusio. She had told the truth.

Bardolin lingered a moment, peering round the tangled interstices of Griella’s mind, noting the linkages here and there between the wolf and the woman, the areas where they were pulling apart, where control was weakest. He withdrew with a sense both of relief and of mourning. She did love Murad, in some perverse manner that even the beast could recognize. And in loving him, she was doing some violence to herself that Bardolin could not quite fathom.

She loved himself, old Bardolin, also—but not in the same way, not at all. He scourged himself for the unexpectedly acute sense of grief at the discovery.

The sun was beating down on them. Griella’s eyes were glassy. He tapped her lightly on the cheek and she blinked, smiled.

“Well?”

“You told the truth,” he said heavily.

“You don’t sound too overjoyed.”

“You may not have killed Pernicus, but you play a dangerous game with Murad, child.”

“That is my business.”

“All right, but it seems that the impossible is true: there is another shifter aboard the ship.”

“Another shifter? How can that be?”

“I have no idea. You have not sensed anything, have you? You do not have any suspicions?”

“Why, no. I have never in my life met another sufferer of the black disease, though folk said the Hebros were full of them.”

“Then it seems there is nothing we can do until he chooses to reveal himself.”

“Why would another shifter take ship with us?”

“To cause the abortion of the voyage, perhaps. That would be his motive for killing Pernicus. Murad told me something today which intrigues me. I must go down and consult my books.”

“Tell me, Bardolin! What is going on?”

“I don’t yet know myself. Keep your eyes open. And Griella: do not let the beast free for a while, not even in the privacy of Murad’s cabin.”

She flushed. “You saw that! You pried on us.”

“I had no choice. The man is bad for you, child, and you for him. Remember that.

“I am not a child, Bardolin. You had best not treat me like one.”

He stroked her satin cheek gently, fingers touching the tawny freckles there, the sun-brown skin.

“Do not think ill of me, Griella. I am an old man, and I worry about you.”

“You are not so old, and I am sorry you worry.” But her eyes were unrelenting.

Bardolin turned away and scooped up the watching imp.

“Come. Let us see if this not-so-old man can make his way down this labyrinth of ropes without cracking open his grey-haired skull on the deck.”

T HE carrack inched westwards painfully, towed by the labouring men in the ship’s boats. They made scarcely two leagues a day, and the sailors became exhausted though the boat crews changed every hour. Hawkwood began to ration the water as though it were gold, and soldiers with iron bullets in their arquebuses guarded the water casks in the forward part of the hold day and night. The ship’s company became subdued and apprehensive. Salt sores began to appear on everyone’s bodies as the allowance of fresh water for washing was cut and the salt in garments began to abrade the skin. And still the sun blasted down out of a flawless sky, and in the clear green water below the keel the shadow of hanging weed grew longer as it built up on the carrack’s hull.

The sailors trolled for fish to eke out the shipboard provisions. They hauled in herrin on their westward migration, wingfish, huge tub-bodied feluna, and sometimes the writhing, entangled sliminess of large octopuses, some of them almost big enough to swamp the smaller of the longboats.

Weed began to be sighted in matted expanses across the surface of the sea, and on the weed itself colonies of pink and scarlet crabs scuttled about seeking carrion. The weed beds stank to high heaven and were infested with sealice and other vermin. Inevitably some made their way aboard, and soon most of the ship’s company had their share of irritating red bites and unwelcome itches on scalp and in groin.

In the dark of one middle watch a great glistening back rose like a birthing hill out of the sea alongside the carrack, and for half a glass it rose and sank there, a bulk that rivalled the ship in size. A long-necked head with a horny beak regarded the astonished ship’s watch before diving below the surface again in a flurry of white foam. A